A passing driver's image of the billboard, courtesy of LiveInternet. (Note the break lights.)

On January 14, at precisely 11:05 pm, a giant digital billboard on one of the busiest streets in Moscow lit up with something highly unsual. The traffic jam was almost instantaneous as awed drivers craned to get a glimpse of the entertainment. By 11:08 pm, authorities realized that the billboard was spinning hard-core porn.

It took the authorities until 11:23 pm to get the two-minute clip down, but the section of the Garden Ring Road near the Oktyabrskaya metro station was already at a stand-still and everyone was roundly embarrassed.

Today, just over a month after the erotic attack by the “cyber hooligan,” police in the Black Sea city of Novorossiisk arrested an unnamed 40 year-old man they believed hacked the advertising company’s playlist and added his own material. Apparently, he thought he was hacking into the system of some supermarket and didn’t anticipate that it would light up a major thoroughfare in the country’s capital and most populous city. He also admitted that he used a Chechen proxy, thinking that the police would be loath “to go there.”

The suspect was described only as “highly qualified” but unemployed, as well an “advanced Internet user.” He hacked the system, the local police spokeswoman said, “out of curiosity.”

The advanced Internet user himself had a different explanation, telling the police, “I just wanted to give people a laugh.”